Legal aid for a torturer. Are we mad?

Convicted yardie Mark Lambie, serving 12 years for kidnap and torture, was this week given £10,000 legal aid to sue the Home Secretary for having him moved to a tougher-category jail.

Lambie was not moved arbitrarily: he had a secret mobile phone and was thought to be organising a break-out.

That scandalous waste of public money is insignificant, though, compared with the £250,000 legal bill three thugs ran up in taking a case to the High Court.

They were part of a gang of seven given anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) after a two-year reign of terror on a London estate.

They claimed their human rights were infringed because the local council published leaflets with their pictures on, warning residents to be on the alert.

Their case was eventually thrown out after being heard by two senior judges. However, this and the Lambie case show, in almost every detail, the perverted values that now mark the treatment of criminals in our society, and the way the law is betraying those whom it is supposed to protect.

We used to have a clear idea of the difference between right and wrong. We used also to accept that part of the punishment for being a convicted criminal was the loss of some of the rights the rest of us take for granted.

Wrong-doers might, for example, be sent to prison and the publicising of their convictions was all part of the punishment process, not least because we believed that the threat of public shame and the loss of reputation would act as a deterrent.

That was before the advent of insanely restrictive human rights laws and its bastard child, the legal aid industry. Today, fewer and fewer lawyers have a vocation to serve the interests of justice. More and more wish to serve only their bank balances.

in Lambie's case, it was amazing that a man convicted of kidnap, and of torturing his victims with a hammer, electric iron and boiling water, was sent only to a Category B jail in the first place. For him to have access to legal aid to dispute his further punishment after his alleged involvement in the planned escape is a monstrous misuse of the system.

The case of the named-and-shamed thugs simply confirms the point. They, too, seem to have got off lightly - only one of the original seven is in jail - despite their two years for robbery, vandalism, assaults and threats, and despite abusing the judge who tried their case.

Human rights law was developed after World War II to prevent evil such as Hitler's murder of millions of people in death camps. It is now used to stop evil people suffering the consequences of their crimes.

Criminals have a right to be treated fairly and consistently. They have, however, no right to exploit a ludicrously politically correct legal aid system, in collusion with greedy lawyers.

The Government, which is now using our money to pay a total legal aid bill of £2 billion, must urgently reform the definition of what cases are and are not serious enough to be pursued at the public's expense.

Failure to do so will lead to more criminals making a mockery of justice, and endemic corruption of the legal profession. And, more importantly, it will destroy the public's faith in the rule of law once and for all.

Job creation for zealots

• The Commission for Racial Equality exists to create well-paid work for anti-racism agitators.

Since we are a highly tolerant nation, this requires racial tensions to be whipped up if the zealots are to be kept busy. Yesterday the head of the CRE, Trevor Phillips, said that because there are so few immigrants in rural areas, this amounts to evidence of apartheid in Britain.

Has Mr Phillips considered that many people from the country feel unwelcome in many towns and cities, especially those with large populations from different cultures? What is Mr Phillips going to do about that?

• The United Nations is doubtless embarrassed by revelations that some of its senior officials were systematically bribed by Saddam Hussein.

Not so the French, whose response to the proof that senior politicians, officials and businessmen of theirs had been bribed - perhaps this explains why France was so against the war - was to pretend it hadn't happened.

Not a word appeared about the allegations in the French Press. It's bad enough in this country that the establishment is completely obedient to the Government. Thank God the media are not too.